Project Skybridge puts the ARM into AMD.
At a press conference in San Francisco Monday, AMD outlined its plans to integrate ARM and x86 architecture into the same chip as part of something it calls its “ambidextrous computing” strategy.
According to slides presented during AMD’s press conference, Project Skybridge will see 20nm x86 based on a next-generation Puma+ x86 cores and ARM Cortex A-57 SoCs that are pin-compatible with each other introduced in 2015. Both will feature AMD’s Graphics Core Next architecture on the SoC. In AMD lingo, pin-compatible means a single socket could take an x86 or ARM SoC depending on what makes more sense for the intended use case.
AMD’s Lisa Su also said that Skybridge chips will use HSA and will be the first platform from the company compatible with Android.
Looking ahead to 2016, AMD said that it would introduce its first custom designed ARM-core codenamed “K12” and a next-generation x86 core. The design team for both of these chips will be headed up by Jim Keller, who led the design teams of the Apple A4-A5 as well as AMD’s K8.
When it crumbles, ARM will stand tall
The only way to look at Skybridge is to see it as AMD declaring a loss of faith in their own platforms particularly HSA. While Intel is proving that the x86 architecture can be adapted to work on a variety of non-traditional platforms, Skybridge shows that AMD is largely abandoning that dream and moving towards an ARM-powered future. Granted Intel is playing with an unfair advantage: its contra revenue subsidies can’t be matched by any company on the market. It’s something that only Intel can do given the sheer size of its market cap and funds available to it.
What’s particularly interesting is the pivot away from the original promise of the APU — leveraging on-board graphics card for compute — before the benefits of the platform have been fully realized. As MediaTeak executive and HSA Foundation board member Chien-Ping Lu said in a March interview with VR-Zone, the impetus of creating HSA was to allow programmers to address the CPU and GPU simultaneously. Granted, HSA and this method of compute will no doubt be used on these new chips but the focus has shifted to embracing the advantages of ARM instead.
AMD can’t compete toe-to-toe with Intel. That’s a given. It’s not entirely fair how Intel secures markets in emerging form factors, but that’s just business. This endeavor might show promise, but it would be more promising if AMD was in better financial shape and had more market share allowing it to dictate market trends with more authority. Considering now that HSA and hUMA have been pushed from the limelight — and how relatively quickly this happened — any new architecture plans from AMD should be approached with extreme caution. Time will tell if Skybridge will*skyfall.
AMD can’t compete toe-to-toe with Intel. That’s a given. It’s not entirely fair how Intel secures markets in emerging form factors, but that’s just business. This endeavor might show promise, but it would be more promising if AMD was in better financial shape and had more market share allowing it to dictate market trends with more authority. Considering now that HSA and hUMA have been pushed from the limelight — and how relatively quickly this happened — any new architecture plans from AMD should be approached with extreme caution. Time will tell if Skybridge will*skyfall.
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